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Lot Essay
The chair's unusual design and carved details compare to a pair of parcel-gilt walnut armchairs from Chatsworth, located in the State Dining Room (one illustrated in L. Wood, The Upholstered Furniture in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool, 2008, vol. I, p. 506, fig. 347). The museum's chair, obviously altered in form, was likely once closer to the Chatsworth model and can certainly be attributed to the same maker. Another chair of the Chatsworth pattern appears in a photograph of Francis Lenygon's premises at 31 Burlington Street (see F. Lenygon, Decoration in England 1660-1770, London, 1914, p. 171, fig. 188). Lenygon & Co. were decorators, dealers and restorers and it would appear that they engaged in replicating 18th century prototypes, sometimes spurious copies, from prominent clients including the Duke of Devonshire. Copies of armchairs from another suite at Chatsworth were supplied to another of his best clients, Viscount Leverhulme (sold The Leverhulme Collection, Thornton Manor, Surrey; Sotheby's, London, 26-28 June 2001, lot 175). The distinctive seat construction of an inner frame to hold the webbing conforms to that on Thomas Roberts’ chairs supplied to Sir Robert Walpole for Houghton in 1728 (‘Houghton’, Christie’s, London, 9 December 1994, lot 128).
The chair and the previous lot are both reputed to have come from the collections of the Earls of Strathmore, ancestral family of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Queen Consort of King George VI. There were two main periods of renovation of the Bowes family estates at Streatlam Castle circa 1717-1722 and at Gibside circa 1743, the latter on the occasion of George Bowes's second marriage. Gibside became a showcase such that, in 1753, Lady Montague of Denton Hall extolled the 'glamour and magnificence of what Mr. Bowes has done and is a-doing' (M. Wills and H. Coutts, 'The Bowes Family of Streatlam Castle and Gibside and Its Collections', Metropolitan Museum Journal 33, 1998, pp. 231-243). Both Streatlam and Gibside were vacated in the 1920s (and demolished in the 1950s), but Lady Strathmore took some of the contents from both houses back to Glamis Castle, the family's ancestral home in Scotland, at this time (G. Worsley, England's Lost Houses, London, 2002, pp. 62-63).
The chair and the previous lot are both reputed to have come from the collections of the Earls of Strathmore, ancestral family of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Queen Consort of King George VI. There were two main periods of renovation of the Bowes family estates at Streatlam Castle circa 1717-1722 and at Gibside circa 1743, the latter on the occasion of George Bowes's second marriage. Gibside became a showcase such that, in 1753, Lady Montague of Denton Hall extolled the 'glamour and magnificence of what Mr. Bowes has done and is a-doing' (M. Wills and H. Coutts, 'The Bowes Family of Streatlam Castle and Gibside and Its Collections', Metropolitan Museum Journal 33, 1998, pp. 231-243). Both Streatlam and Gibside were vacated in the 1920s (and demolished in the 1950s), but Lady Strathmore took some of the contents from both houses back to Glamis Castle, the family's ancestral home in Scotland, at this time (G. Worsley, England's Lost Houses, London, 2002, pp. 62-63).